Mary

I am certain that Mary is entering her terrible twos. She is the main reason that pictures have been limited on the blog lately. It is REALLY hard to take a picture with one hand while you are holding a 30 pound baby on your hip in the other hand. Yes, I could put her down, but I will pay for it! In our arms is where she is most happy. Neil and I would be happy to hold and cuddle with her all day. However, she won't let us sit down. She not only wants us to hold her, she wants us to walk around with her. She also loves for me to hold her while I'm cooking dinner. I love her, but the girl is heavy! My arms hurt so bad after holding her and attempting to get something done. If she doesn't get what she wants then she SCREAMS at the top of her lungs. There are a lot a tears and nasty snot included with those screams. I have been told to just let her scream and she'll get over it. Yesterday I took that approach. She was mad because I tried to put her down for a nap. She screamed for 10 minutes in her crib. We're talking losing her breath screaming. When I went and got her she was so mad that I couldn't calm her down. I tried to comfort her, but after a while I just put her down and told her to get over it. She literally followed me around and screamed and screamed. I don't know how long she did it, but I just kept walking from room to room cleaning and she just followed. I kept trying to calm her with words. I would ask her if she wanted to help me, but I never picked her up again - which is exactly what she wanted. She eventually got so mad at me that she went upstairs and banged on Ty's bedroom door and woke him up from his nap! Once that happened I just stopped cleaning and the three of us went into our bedroom and watched Sprout until Neil got home. I was exhausted and so was Mary by the end of the day.

So, our sweet little princess loves to throw fits. I DO NOT condone these fits. However, what in the crap am I supposed to do when she doesn't stop? I don't want to listen to her SCREAM for hours and hours - it gets old! We are working on alternate solutions. We don't necessarily give her what she wants, but we try to find something that will make everybody happy. For example, yesterday she saw Neil's Diet Coke can sitting on the counter and she asked for some. When we refused to give it to her a major fit followed. She stood in the kitchen and screamed at the top of her lungs for at least 15 minutes. I was cooking dinner and I finally had to pick her up so that we could eat. She was happy when we all sat down to eat and she was happy to have something to eat in front of her.

I love her so much, but she is exhausting right now. The bright side is that maybe the sooner she enters this phase the sooner she will be out of it. I do not remember this phase with Tyrus. I'm sure that he threw fits, but I don't even remember one of them. This is new territory to both Neil and I. The good news is that she is still sleeping at night. I have no complaints in that area at all. Sometimes it may take a little bit longer to get her down, but those times are rare and if we take a little time then once she's down then she's down for the night.

I in no way want to wish her babyhood away, but I just keep thinking about when we are past this phase and we can actually talk to her the way we do Tyrus.